Law & Disorder —

RIAA spends thousands to obtain $300 judgment

The RIAA agrees to a judgment of $300 after suing a single mother in state- …

What's the cost of file-sharing? For Terri Frye of Hickory, NC, it was $300. That's the amount she'll have to pay the RIAA after agreeing to a judgment in a file-sharing case. Frye is a single mother living in state-supported housing who received one of the RIAA's settlement letters in November 2005. Wanting to defend her innocence, she immediately contacted a lawyer. "She did a good thing, finding a lawyer as soon as she found out [the RIAA] was pursuing her," Joey Long, one of her attorneys, told Ars Technica. "It's what every person should do when they receive a settlement letter."

Despite contacting Frye in late 2005, the RIAA did not actually file suit until March of this year. In the intervening period, Frye repeatedly informed the RIAA that they had the wrong person. Even if she was guilty of infringement, another of Frye's attorneys, Matthew K. Rodgers, told the labels that she couldn't afford to pay damages of up to $750 per song due to her financial situation.

The correspondence between the RIAA's legal counsel and Frye's between the time of the settlement letter and the filing of the lawsuit paints a picture of the RIAA's unwillingness to budge at all from its position that Frye was either directly or indirectly responsible for infringement, despite her protestations to the contrary. It also showed a troubling lack of communication within the RIAA. According to a filing by Frye, the RIAA agreed to give her until May 16 to file an answer to their complaint. Then, on May 4, the plaintiffs informed Long that they were going to file for a default judgment, saying that the agreed-to extension was "not in the file."

As early as December 2005, Frye offered to work with the labels "to avoid any liability and will agree to any reasonable condition that would avoid the payment of any penalties." The following month, she was informed that the RIAA would not "release" her from the claims of infringement, and even if she offered the RIAA an affidavit identifying the person she believed responsible for the infringement, the record labels would not agree to drop their claims against her without having the affidavit in hand.

After months of back-and-forth between the RIAA and Frye, the RIAA filed suit in March of this year. This came despite Frye's assertions that she had told the owner of the PC associated with the account about the RIAA's inquiries and that the owner subsequently deleted all the incriminating evidence.

"The RIAA wanted us to reveal who actually committed the infringement," said Long. But absent any assurances that she would not be held liable for infringement herself, she was unwilling to divulge the information herself.

The end result is that the RIAA likely spent thousands of dollars to obtain a $300 judgment. And although Frye agrees to be enjoined against future copyright infringement, she does not admit to any wrongdoing. We asked Long if Frye was going to work with the record labels to identify the person actually responsible for the infringement now that the case has been closed and a judgment entered. "I can't disclose any of the information about that," Long told Ars. "It's between us and them."

The RIAA's prelitigation settlement letters say that defendants are liable for costs of $750 per song. MediaSentry flagged 706 songs on the computer that became the basis for the lawsuit, and at $750 per song, that works out to a total of $529,500. The RIAA settled for a minuscule fraction of that number, one curiously close to the 70¢-per-track figure a record industry attorney said is close to the labels' share of each track sold. File-sharing defendants have argued that the $750-per-track damages sought by the RIAA are excessive, and here we have them accepting a judgment for about 40¢ per track. The RIAA appears willing to extract even a miniscule settlement from a single mother on federal assistance who was willing to help them discover the true identity of the alleged infringer rather than walk away emptyhanded.

Eric Bangeman
Eric has been using personal computers since 1980 and writing about them at Ars Technica since 2003, where he currently serves as Managing Editor. Twitter@ericbangeman